1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to methods for removing ionic species from desalination units.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Less than one percent of water on the earth's surface is suitable for direct consumption in domestic or industrial applications. With the limited sources of natural consumable water, de-ionization of seawater or brackish water, is a way to produce fresh water. In addition, other fluids sometimes are deionized before use, e.g., cheese whey is deashed using deionization technologies in many plants.
Deionization of liquids using currently available technologies usually produces two types of product streams, i.e., a waste stream with a higher concentration of ions and a recovery stream having a lower concentration of ions or in some instance being ion free. The waste stream is typically discarded as waste and the recovery stream is kept for consumption.
It is often desired that less consumable liquid be discarded (as the waste stream) from a certain feed stream. However, for presently available desalination (deionization) techniques, more recovered consumable liquid from certain feed streams usually means exposing the desalination systems to feeds having significantly higher concentrations of ions.
The high concentrations of ions may lead to scaling in the desalination system. For example, sparingly soluble salts, e.g., calcium sulfate (CaSO4), in saline liquid may scale (precipitate or crystallize, etc.) in the desalination system and affect the performance of the desalination system.
It would be desirable to have a method for desalination that has a high recovery of consumable liquids and avoids scaling of sparingly soluble salts in the desalination system.